Before Adam, by Jack London

Its easy to link to paragraphs in the Full Text ArchiveIf this page contains some material that you want to link to but you don't want your visitors to have to scroll down the whole page just hover your mouse over the relevent paragraph and click the bookmark icon that appears to the left of it. The address of that paragraph will appear in the address bar of your browser. For further details about how you can link to the Full Text Archive please refer to our linking page.

"These are our ancestors, and their history is ourhistory. Remember that as surely as we one day swungdown out of the trees and walked upright, just assurely, on a far earlier day, did we crawl up out ofthe sea and achieve our first adventure on land."

CHAPTER I

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, before I learned,did I wonder whence came the multitudes of picturesthat thronged my dreams; for they were pictures thelike of which I had never seen in real wake-a-day life.They tormented my childhood, making of my dreams aprocession of nightmares and a little later convincingme that I was different from my kind, a creatureunnatural and accursed.

In my days only did I attain any measure of happiness.My nights marked the reign of fear--and such fear! Imake bold to state that no man of all the men who walkthe earth with me ever suffer fear of like kind anddegree. For my fear is the fear of long ago, the fearthat was rampant in the Younger World, and in the youthof the Younger World. In short, the fear that reignedsupreme in that period known as the Mid-Pleistocene.

What do I mean? I see explanation is necessary before Ican tell you of the substance of my dreams. Otherwise,little could you know of the meaning of the things Iknow so well. As I write this, all the beings andhappenings of that other world rise up before me invast phantasmagoria, and I know that to you they wouldbe rhymeless and reasonless.

What to you the friendship of Lop-Ear, the warm lure ofthe Swift One, the lust and the atavism of Red-Eye? Ascreaming incoherence and no more. And a screamingincoherence, likewise, the doings of the Fire Peopleand the Tree People, and the gibbering councils of thehorde. For you know not the peace of the cool caves inthe cliffs, the circus of the drinking-places at theend of the day. You have never felt the bite of themorning wind in the tree-tops, nor is the taste ofyoung bark sweet in your mouth.

It would be better, I dare say, for you to make yourapproach, as I made mine, through my childhood. As aboy I was very like other boys--in my waking hours. Itwas in my sleep that I was different. From my earliestrecollection my sleep was a period of terror. Rarelywere my dreams tinctured with happiness. As a rule,they were stuffed with fear--and with a fear so strangeand alien that it had no ponderable quality. No fearthat I experienced in my waking life resembled the fearthat possessed me in my sleep. It was of a quality andkind that transcended all my experiences.

For instance, I was a city boy, a city child, rather,to whom the country was an unexplored domain. Yet Inever dreamed of cities; nor did a house ever occur inany of my dreams. Nor, for that matter, did any of myhuman kind ever break through the wall of my sleep. I,who had seen trees only in parks and illustrated books,wandered in my sleep through interminable forests. Andfurther, these dream trees were not a mere blur on myvision. They were sharp and distinct. I was on termsof practised intimacy with them. I saw every branchand twig; I saw and knew every different leaf.

Well do I remember the first time in my waking lifethat I saw an oak tree. As I looked at the leaves andbranches and gnarls, it came to me with distressingvividness that I had seen that same kind of tree manyand countless times n my sleep. So I was notsurprised, still later on in my life, to recognizeinstantly, the first time I saw them, trees such as thespruce, the yew, the birch, and the laurel. I had seenthem all before, and was seeing them even then, everynight, in my sleep.

This, as you have already discerned, violates the firstlaw of dreaming, namely, that in one's dreams one seesonly what he has seen in his waking life, orcombinations of the things he has seen in his wakinglife. But all my dreams violated this law. In mydreams I never saw ANYTHING of which I had knowledge inmy waking life. My dream life and my waking life werelives apart, with not one thing in common save myself.I was the connecting link that somehow lived bothlives.

Early in my childhood I learned that nuts came from thegrocer, berries from the fruit man; but before everthat knowledge was mine, in my dreams I picked nutsfrom trees, or gathered them and ate them from theground underneath trees, and in the same way I ateberries from vines and bushes. This was beyond anyexperience of mine.

I shall never forget the first time I saw blueberriesserved on the table. I had never seen blueberriesbefore, and yet, at the sight of them, there leaped upin my mind memories of dreams wherein I had wanderedthrough swampy land eating my fill of them. My motherset before me a dish of the berries. I filled myspoon, but before I raised it to my mouth I knew justhow they would taste. Nor was I disappointed. It wasthe same tang that I had tasted a thousand times in mysleep.

Snakes? Long before I had heard of the existence ofsnakes, I was tormented by them in my sleep. Theylurked for me in the forest glades; leaped up,striking, under my feet; squirmed off through the drygrass or across naked patches of rock; or pursued meinto the tree-tops, encircling the trunks with theirgreat shining bodies, driving me higher and higher orfarther and farther out on swaying and cracklingbranches, the ground a dizzy distance beneath me.Snakes!--with their forked tongues, their beady eyesand glittering scales, their hissing and theirrattling--did I not already know them far too well onthat day of my first circus when I saw thesnake-charmer lift them up?

They were old friends of mine, enemies rather, thatpeopled my nights with fear.

Ah, those endless forests, and their horror-hauntedgloom! For what eternities have I wandered throughthem, a timid, hunted creature, starting at the leastsound, frightened of my own shadow, keyed-up, everalert and vigilant, ready on the instant to dash awayin mad flight for my life. For I was the prey of allmanner of fierce life that dwelt in the forest, and itwas in ecstasies of fear that I fled before the huntingmonsters.

When I was five years old I went to my first circus. Icame home from it sick--but not from peanuts and pinklemonade. Let me tell you. As we entered the animaltent, a hoarse roaring shook the air. I tore my handloose from my father's and dashed wildly back throughthe entrance. I collided with people, fell down; andall the time I was screaming with terror. My fathercaught me and soothed me. He pointed to the crowd ofpeople, all careless of the roaring, and cheered mewith assurances of safety.

Nevertheless, it was in fear and trembling, and withmuch encouragement on his part, that I at lastapproached the lion's cage. Ah, I knew him on theinstant. The beast! The terrible one! And on my innervision flashed the memories of my dreams,--the middaysun shining on tall grass, the wild bull grazingquietly, the sudden parting of the grass before theswift rush of the tawny one, his leap to the bull'sback, the crashing and the bellowing, and the crunchcrunch of bones; or again, the cool quiet of thewater-hole, the wild horse up to his knees and drinkingsoftly, and then the tawny one--always the tawny one!--the leap, the screaming and the splashing of the horse,and the crunch crunch of bones; and yet again, thesombre twilight and the sad silence of the end of day,and then the great full-throated roar, sudden, like atrump of doom, and swift upon it the insane shriekingand chattering among the trees, and I, too, amtrembling with fear and am one of the many shriekingand chattering among the trees.

At the sight of him, helpless, within the bars of hiscage, I became enraged. I gritted my teeth at him,danced up and down, screaming an incoherent mockery andmaking antic faces. He responded, rushing against thebars and roaring back at me his impotent wrath. Ah, heknew me, too, and the sounds I made were the sounds ofold time and intelligible to him.

My parents were frightened. "The child is ill," saidmy mother. "He is hysterical," said my father. I nevertold them, and they never knew. Already had Ideveloped reticence concerning this quality of mine,this semi-disassociation of personality as I think I amjustified in calling it.

I saw the snake-charmer, and no more of the circus didI see that night. I was taken home, nervous andoverwrought, sick with the invasion of my real life bythat other life of my dreams.

I have mentioned my reticence. Only once did I confidethe strangeness of it all to another. He was a boy--mychum; and we were eight years old. From my dreams Ireconstructed for him pictures of that vanished worldin which I do believe I once lived. I told him of theterrors of that early time, of Lop-Ear and the prankswe played, of the gibbering councils, and of the FirePeople and their squatting places.

He laughed at me, and jeered, and told me tales ofghosts and of the dead that walk at night. But mostlydid he laugh at my feeble fancy. I told him more, andhe laughed the harder. I swore in all earnestness thatthese things were so, and he began to look upon mequeerly. Also, he gave amazing garblings of my talesto our playmates, until all began to look upon mequeerly.

It was a bitter experience, but I learned my lesson. Iwas different from my kind. I was abnormal withsomething they could not understand, and the telling ofwhich would cause only misunderstanding. When thestories of ghosts and goblins went around, I keptquiet. I smiled grimly to myself. I thought of mynights of fear, and knew that mine were the realthings--real as life itself, not attenuated vapors andsurmised shadows.

For me no terrors resided in the thought of bugaboosand wicked ogres. The fall through leafy branches andthe dizzy heights; the snakes that struck at me as Idodged and leaped away in chattering flight; the wilddogs that hunted me across the open spaces to thetimber--these were terrors concrete and actual,happenings and not imaginings, things of the livingflesh and of sweat and blood. Ogres and bugaboos and Ihad been happy bed-fellows, compared with these terrorsthat made their bed with me throughout my childhood,and that still bed with me, now, as I write this, fullof years.

CHAPTER II

I have said that in my dreams I never saw a humanbeing. Of this fact I became aware very early, andfelt poignantly the lack of my own kind. As a verylittle child, even, I had a feeling, in the midst ofthe horror of my dreaming, that if I could find but oneman, only one human, I should be saved from mydreaming, that I should be surrounded no more byhaunting terrors. This thought obsessed me every nightof my life for years--if only I could find that onehuman and be saved!

I must iterate that I had this thought in the midst ofmy dreaming, and I take it as an evidence of themerging of my two personalities, as evidence of a pointof contact between the two disassociated parts of me.My dream personality lived in the long ago, before everman, as we know him, came to be; and my other andwake-a-day personality projected itself, to the extentof the knowledge of man's existence, into the substanceof my dreams.

Perhaps the psychologists of the book will find faultwith my way of using the phrase, "disassociation ofpersonality." I know their use of it, yet am compelledto use it in my own way in default of a better phrase.I take shelter behind the inadequacy of the Englishlanguage. And now to the explanation of my use, ormisuse, of the phrase.

It was not till I was a young man, at college, that Igot any clew to the significance of my dreams, and tothe cause of them. Up to that time they had beenmeaningless and without apparent causation. But atcollege I discovered evolution and psychology, andlearned the explanation of various strange mentalstates and experiences. For instance, there was thefalling-through-space dream--the commonest dreamexperience, one practically known, by first-handexperience, to all men.

This, my professor told me, was a racial memory. Itdated back to our remote ancestors who lived in trees.With them, being tree-dwellers, the liability offalling was an ever-present menace. Many lost theirlives that way; all of them experienced terrible falls,saving themselves by clutching branches as they felltoward the ground.

Now a terrible fall, averted in such fashion, wasproductive of shock. Such shock was productive ofmolecular changes in the cerebral cells. Thesemolecular changes were transmitted to the cerebralcells of progeny, became, in short, racial memories.Thus, when you and I, asleep or dozing off to sleep,fall through space and awake to sickening consciousnessjust before we strike, we are merely remembering whathappened to our arboreal ancestors, and which has beenstamped by cerebral changes into the heredity of therace.

There is nothing strange in this, any more than thereis anything strange in an instinct. An instinct ismerely a habit that is stamped into the stuff of ourheredity, that is all. It will be noted, in passing,that in this falling dream which is so familiar to youand me and all of us, we never strike bottom. Tostrike bottom would be destruction. Those of ourarboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith.True, the shock of their fall was communicated to thecerebral cells, but they died immediately, before theycould have progeny. You and I are descended from thosethat did not strike bottom; that is why you and I, inour dreams, never strike bottom.

And now we come to disassociation of personality. Wenever have this sense of falling when we are wideawake. Our wake-a-day personality has no experience ofit. Then--and here the argument is irresistible--itmust be another and distinct personality that fallswhen we are asleep, and that has had experience of suchfalling--that has, in short, a memory of past-day raceexperiences, just as our wake-a-day personality has amemory of our wake-a-day experiences.

It was at this stage in my reasoning that I began tosee the light. And quickly the light burst upon mewith dazzling brightness, illuminating and explainingall that had been weird and uncanny and unnaturallyimpossible in my dream experiences. In my sleep it wasnot my wake-a-day personality that took charge of me;it was another and distinct personality, possessing anew and totally different fund of experiences, and, tothe point of my dreaming, possessing memories of thosetotally different experiences.

What was this personality? When had it itself lived awake-a-day life on this planet in order to collect thisfund of strange experiences? These were questions thatmy dreams themselves answered. He lived in the longago, when the world was young, in that period that wecall the Mid-Pleistocene. He fell from the trees butdid not strike bottom. He gibbered with fear at theroaring of the lions. He was pursued by beasts ofprey, struck at by deadly snakes. He chattered withhis kind in council, and he received rough usage at thehands of the Fire People in the day that he fled beforethem.

But, I hear you objecting, why is it that these racialmemories are not ours as well, seeing that we have avague other-personality that falls through space whilewe sleep?

And I may answer with another question. Why is atwo-headed calf? And my own answer to this is that itis a freak. And so I answer your question. I havethis other-personality and these complete racialmemories because I am a freak.

But let me be more explicit.

The commonest race memory we have is thefalling-through-space dream. This other-personality isvery vague. About the only memory it has is that offalling. But many of us have sharper, more distinctother-personalities. Many of us have the flying dream,the pursuing-monster dream, color dreams, suffocationdreams, and the reptile and vermin dreams. In short,while this other-personality is vestigial in all of us,in some of us it is almost obliterated, while in othersof us it is more pronounced. Some of us have strongerand completer race memories than others.

It is all a question of varying degree of possession ofthe other-personality. In myself, the degree ofpossession is enormous. My other-personality is almostequal in power with my own personality. And in thismatter I am, as I said, a freak--a freak of heredity.

I do believe that it is the possession of thisother-personality--but not so strong a one asmine--that has in some few others given rise to beliefin personal reincarnation experiences. It is veryplausible to such people, a most convincing hypothesis.When they have visions of scenes they have never seenin the flesh, memories of acts and events dating backin time, the simplest explanation is that they havelived before.

But they make the mistake of ignoring their ownduality. They do not recognize theirother-personality. They think it is their ownpersonality, that they have only one personality; andfrom such a premise they can conclude only that theyhave lived previous lives.

But they are wrong. It is not reincarnation. I havevisions of myself roaming through the forests of theYounger World; and yet it is not myself that I see butone that is only remotely a part of me, as my fatherand my grandfather are parts of me less remote. Thisother-self of mine is an ancestor, a progenitor of myprogenitors in the early line of my race, himself theprogeny of a line that long before his time developedfingers and toes and climbed up into the trees.

I must again, at the risk of boring, repeat that I am,in this one thing, to be considered a freak. Not alonedo I possess racial memory to an enormous extent, but Ipossess the memories of one particular and far-removedprogenitor. And yet, while this is most unusual, thereis nothing over-remarkable about it.

Follow my reasoning. An instinct is a racial memory.Very good. Then you and I and all of us receive thesememories from our fathers and mothers, as they receivedthem from their fathers and mothers. Therefore theremust be a medium whereby these memories are transmittedfrom generation to generation. This medium is whatWeismann terms the "germplasm." It carries the memoriesof the whole evolution of the race. These memories aredim and confused, and many of them are lost. But somestrains of germplasm carry an excessive freightage ofmemories--are, to be scientific, more atavistic thanother strains; and such a strain is mine. I am a freakof heredity, an atavistic nightmare--call me what youwill; but here I am, real and alive, eating threehearty meals a day, and what are you going to do aboutit?

And now, before I take up my tale, I want to anticipatethe doubting Thomases of psychology, who are prone toscoff, and who would otherwise surely say that thecoherence of my dreams is due to overstudy and thesubconscious projection of my knowledge of evolutioninto my dreams. In the first place, I have never beena zealous student. I graduated last of my class. Icared more for athletics, and--there is no reason Ishould not confess it--more for billiards.

Further, I had no knowledge of evolution until I was atcollege, whereas in my childhood and youth I hadalready lived in my dreams all the details of thatother, long-ago life. I will say, however, that thesedetails were mixed and incoherent until I came to knowthe science of evolution. Evolution was the key. Itgave the explanation, gave sanity to the pranks of thisatavistic brain of mine that, modern and normal, harkedback to a past so remote as to be contemporaneous withthe raw beginnings of mankind.

For in this past I know of, man, as we to-day know him,did not exist. It was in the period of his becomingthat I must have lived and had my being.

CHAPTER III

The commonest dream of my early childhood was somethinglike this: It seemed that I was very small and that Ilay curled up in a sort of nest of twigs and boughs.Sometimes I was lying on my back. In this position itseemed that I spent many hours, watching the play ofsunlight on the foliage and the stirring of the leavesby the wind. Often the nest itself moved back andforth when the wind was strong.

But always, while so lying in the nest, I was masteredas of tremendous space beneath me. I never saw it, Inever peered over the edge of the nest to see; but IKNEW and feared that space that lurked just beneath meand that ever threatened me like a maw of someall-devouring monster.

This dream, in which I was quiescent and which was morelike a condition than an experience of action, Idreamed very often in my early childhood. Butsuddenly, there would rush into the very midst of itstrange forms and ferocious happenings, the thunder andcrashing of storm, or unfamiliar landscapes such as inmy wake-a-day life I had never seen. The result wasconfusion and nightmare. I could comprehend nothing ofit. There was no logic of sequence.

You see, I did not dream consecutively. One moment Iwas a wee babe of the Younger World lying in my treenest; the next moment I was a grown man of the YoungerWorld locked in combat with the hideous Red-Eye; andthe next moment I was creeping carefully down to thewater-hole in the heat of the day. Events, years apartin their occurrence in the Younger World, occurred withme within the space of several minutes, or seconds.

It was all a jumble, but this jumble I shall notinflict upon you. It was not until I was a young manand had dreamed many thousand times, that everythingstraightened out and became clear and plain. Then itwas that I got the clew of time, and was able to piecetogether events and actions in their proper order.Thus was I able to reconstruct the vanished YoungerWorld as it was at the time I lived in it--or at thetime my other-self lived in it. The distinction doesnot matter; for I, too, the modern man, have gone backand lived that early life in the company of myother-self.

For your convenience, since this is to be nosociological screed, I shall frame together thedifferent events into a comprehensive story. For thereis a certain thread of continuity and happening thatruns through all the dreams. There is my friendshipwith Lop-Ear, for instance. Also, there is the enmityof Red-Eye, and the love of the Swift One. Taking itall in all, a fairly coherent and interesting story Iam sure you will agree.

I do not remember much of my mother. Possibly theearliest recollection I have of her--and certainly thesharpest--is the following: It seemed I was lying onthe ground. I was somewhat older than during the nestdays, but still helpless. I rolled about in the dryleaves, playing with them and making crooning, raspingnoises in my throat. The sun shone warmly and I washappy, and comfortable. I was in a little open space.Around me, on all sides, were bushes and fern-likegrowths, and overhead and all about were the trunks andbranches of forest trees.

Suddenly I heard a sound. I sat upright and listened.I made no movement. The little noises died down in mythroat, and I sat as one petrified. The sound drewcloser. It was like the grunt of a pig. Then I beganto hear the sounds caused by the moving of a bodythrough the brush. Next I saw the ferns agitated bythe passage of the body. Then the ferns parted, and Isaw gleaming eyes, a long snout, and white tusks.

It was a wild boar. He peered at me curiously. Hegrunted once or twice and shifted his weight from oneforeleg to the other, at the same time moving his headfrom side to side and swaying the ferns. Still I satas one petrified, my eyes unblinking as I stared athim, fear eating at my heart.

It seemed that this movelessness and silence on my partwas what was expected of me. I was not to cry out inthe face of fear. It was a dictate of instinct. Andso I sat there and waited for I knew not what. Theboar thrust the ferns aside and stepped into the open.The curiosity went out of his eyes, and they gleamedcruelly. He tossed his head at me threateningly andadvanced a step. This he did again, and yet again.

Then I screamed...or shrieked--I cannot describe it,but it was a shrill and terrible cry. And it seemsthat it, too, at this stage of the proceedings, was thething expected of me. From not far away came ananswering cry. My sounds seemed momentarily todisconcert the boar, and while he halted and shiftedhis weight with indecision, an apparition burst uponus.

She was like a large orangutan, my mother, or like achimpanzee, and yet, in sharp and definite ways, quitedifferent. She was heavier of build than they, and hadless hair. Her arms were not so long, and her legswere stouter. She wore no clothes--only her naturalhair. And I can tell you she was a fury when she wasexcited.

And like a fury she dashed upon the scene. She wasgritting her teeth, making frightful grimaces,snarling, uttering sharp and continuous cries thatsounded like "kh-ah! kh-ah!" So sudden and formidablewas her appearance that the boar involuntarily bunchedhimself together on the defensive and bristled as sheswerved toward him. Then she swerved toward me. Shehad quite taken the breath out of him. I knew justwhat to do in that moment of time she had gained. Ileaped to meet her, catching her about the waist andholding on hand and foot--yes, by my feet; I could holdon by them as readily as by my hands. I could feel inmy tense grip the pull of the hair as her skin and hermuscles moved beneath with her efforts.

As I say, I leaped to meet her, and on the instant sheleaped straight up into the air, catching anoverhanging branch with her hands. The next instant,with clashing tusks, the boar drove past underneath.He had recovered from his surprise and sprung forward,emitting a squeal that was almost a trumpeting. At anyrate it was a call, for it was followed by the rushingof bodies through the ferns and brush from alldirections.

From every side wild hogs dashed into the open space--ascore of them. But my mother swung over the top of athick limb, a dozen feet from the ground, and, stillholding on to her, we perched there in safety. She wasvery excited. She chattered and screamed, and scoldeddown at the bristling, tooth-gnashing circle that hadgathered beneath. I, too, trembling, peered down atthe angry beasts and did my best to imitate my mother'scries.

From the distance came similar cries, only pitcheddeeper, into a sort of roaring bass. These grewmomentarily louder, and soon I saw him approaching, myfather--at least, by all the evidence of the times, Iam driven to conclude that he was my father.

He was not an extremely prepossessing father, asfathers go. He seemed half man, and half ape, and yetnot ape, and not yet man. I fail to describe him.There is nothing like him to-day on the earth, underthe earth, nor in the earth. He was a large man in hisday, and he must have weighed all of a hundred andthirty pounds. His face was broad and flat, and theeyebrows over-hung the eyes. The eyes themselves weresmall, deep-set, and close together. He hadpractically no nose at all. It was squat and broad,apparently with-out any bridge, while the nostrils werelike two holes in the face, opening outward instead ofdown.

The forehead slanted back from the eyes, and the hairbegan right at the eyes and ran up over the head. Thehead itself was preposterously small and was supportedon an equally preposterous, thick, short neck.

There was an elemental economy about his body--as wasthere about all our bodies. The chest was deep, it istrue, cavernously deep; but there were no full-swellingmuscles, no wide-spreading shoulders, no clean-limbedstraightness, no generous symmetry of outline. Itrepresented strength, that body of my father's,strength without beauty; ferocious, primordialstrength, made to clutch and gripe and rend anddestroy.

His hips were thin; and the legs, lean and hairy, werecrooked and stringy-muscled. In fact, my father's legswere more like arms. They were twisted and gnarly, andwith scarcely the semblance of the full meaty calf suchas graces your leg and mine. I remember he could notwalk on the flat of his foot. This was because it wasa prehensile foot, more like a hand than a foot. Thegreat toe, instead of being in line with the othertoes, opposed them, like a thumb, and its opposition tothe other toes was what enabled him to get a grip withhis foot. This was why he could not walk on the flatof his foot.

But his appearance was no more unusual than the mannerof his coming, there to my mother and me as we perchedabove the angry wild pigs. He came through the trees,leaping from limb to limb and from tree to tree; and hecame swiftly. I can see him now, in my wake-a-daylife, as I write this, swinging along through thetrees, a four-handed, hairy creature, howling withrage, pausing now and again to beat his chest with hisclenched fist, leaping ten-and-fifteen-foot gaps,catching a branch with one hand and swinging on acrossanother gap to catch with his other hand and go on,never hesitating, never at a loss as to how to proceedon his arboreal way.

And as I watched him I felt in my own being, in my verymuscles themselves, the surge and thrill of desire togo leaping from bough to bough; and I felt also theguarantee of the latent power in that being and inthose muscles of mine. And why not? Little boys watchtheir fathers swing axes and fell trees, and feel inthemselves that some day they, too, will swing axes andfell trees. And so with me. The life that was in mewas constituted to do what my father did, and itwhispered to me secretly and ambitiously of aerialpaths and forest flights.

At last my father joined us. He was extremely angry.I remember the out-thrust of his protruding underlip ashe glared down at the wild pigs. He snarled somethinglike a dog, and I remember that his eye-teeth werelarge, like fangs, and that they impressed metremendously.

His conduct served only the more to infuriate the pigs.He broke off twigs and small branches and flung themdown upon our enemies. He even hung by one hand,tantalizingly just beyond reach, and mocked them asthey gnashed their tusks with impotent rage. Notcontent with this, he broke off a stout branch, and,holding on with one hand and foot, jabbed theinfuriated beasts in the sides and whacked them acrosstheir noses. Needless to state, my mother and I enjoyedthe sport.

But one tires of all good things, and in the end, myfather, chuckling maliciously the while, led the wayacross the trees. Now it was that my ambitions ebbedaway, and I became timid, holding tightly to my motheras she climbed and swung through space. I rememberwhen the branch broke with her weight. She had made awide leap, and with the snap of the wood I wasoverwhelmed with the sickening consciousness of fallingthrough space, the pair of us. The forest and thesunshine on the rustling leaves vanished from my eyes.I had a fading glimpse of my father abruptly arrestinghis progress to look, and then all was blackness.

The next moment I was awake, in my sheeted bed,sweating, trembling, nauseated. The window was up, anda cool air was blowing through the room. Thenight-lamp was burning calmly. And because of this Itake it that the wild pigs did not get us, that wenever fetched bottom; else I should not be here now, athousand centuries after, to remember the event.

And now put yourself in my place for a moment. Walkwith me a bit in my tender childhood, bed with me anight and imagine yourself dreaming suchincomprehensible horrors. Remember I was aninexperienced child. I had never seen a wild boar inmy life. For that matter I had never seen adomesticated pig. The nearest approach to one that Ihad seen was breakfast bacon sizzling in its fat. Andyet here, real as life, wild boars dashed through mydreams, and I, with fantastic parents, swung throughthe lofty tree-spaces.

Do you wonder that I was frightened and oppressed by mynightmare-ridden nights? I was accursed. And, worstof all, I was afraid to tell. I do not know why,except that I had a feeling of guilt, though I knew nobetter of what I was guilty. So it was, through longyears, that I suffered in silence, until I came toman's estate and learned the why and wherefore of mydreams.

CHAPTER IV

There is one puzzling thing about these prehistoricmemories of mine. It is the vagueness of the timeelement. I lo not always know the order of events;--orcan I tell, between some events, whether one, two, orfour or five years have elapsed. I can only roughlytell the passage of time by judging the changes in theappearance and pursuits of my fellows.

Also, I can apply the logic of events to the varioushappenings. For instance, there is no doubt whateverthat my mother and I were treed by the wild pigs andfled and fell in the days before I made theacquaintance of Lop-Ear, who became what I may call myboyhood chum. And it is just as conclusive thatbetween these two periods I must have left my mother.

I have no memory of my father than the one I havegiven. Never, in the years that followed, did hereappear. And from my knowledge of the times, the onlyexplanation possible lies in that he perished shortlyafter the adventure with the wild pigs. That it musthave been an untimely end, there is no discussion. Hewas in full vigor, and only sudden and violent deathcould have taken him off. But I know not the manner ofhis going--whether he was drowned in the river, or wasswallowed by a snake, or went into the stomach of oldSaber-Tooth, the tiger, is beyond my knowledge.

For know that I remember only the things I saw myself,with my own eyes, in those prehistoric days. If mymother knew my father's end, she never told me. Forthat matter I doubt if she had a vocabulary adequate toconvey such information. Perhaps, all told, the Folkin that day had a vocabulary of thirty or forty sounds.

I call them SOUNDS, rather than WORDS, because soundsthey were primarily. They had no fixed values, to bealtered by adjectives and adverbs. These latter weretools of speech not yet invented. Instead of qualifyingnouns or verbs by the use of adjectives and adverbs, wequalified sounds by intonation, by changes in quantityand pitch, by retarding and by accelerating. Thelength of time employed in the utterance of aparticular sound shaded its meaning.

We had no conjugation. One judged the tense by thecontext. We talked only concrete things because wethought only concrete things. Also, we dependedlargely on pantomime. The simplest abstraction waspractically beyond our thinking; and when one didhappen to think one, he was hard put to communicate itto his fellows. There were no sounds for it. He waspressing beyond the limits of his vocabulary. If heinvented sounds for it, his fellows did not understandthe sounds. Then it was that he fell back onpantomime, illustrating the thought wherever possibleand at the same time repeating the new sound over andover again.

Thus language grew. By the few sounds we possessed wewere enabled to think a short distance beyond thosesounds; then came the need for new sounds wherewith toexpress the new thought. Sometimes, however, we thoughttoo long a distance in advance of our sounds, managedto achieve abstractions (dim ones I grant), which wefailed utterly to make known to other folk. After all,language did not grow fast in that day.

Oh, believe me, we were amazingly simple. But we didknow a lot that is not known to-day. We could twitchour ears, prick them up and flatten them down at will.And we could scratch between our shoulders with ease.We could throw stones with our feet. I have done itmany a time. And for that matter, I could keep myknees straight, bend forward from the hips, and touch,not the tips of my fingers, but the points of myelbows, to the ground. And as for bird-nesting--well,I only wish the twentieth-century boy could see us.But we made no collections of eggs. We ate them.

I remember--but I out-run my story. First let me tellof Lop-Ear and our friendship. Very early in my life,I separated from my mother. Possibly this was because,after the death of my father, she took to herself asecond husband. I have few recollections of him, andthey are not of the best. He was a light fellow.There was no solidity to him. He was too voluble. Hisinfernal chattering worries me even now as I think ofit. His mind was too inconsequential to permit him topossess purpose. Monkeys in their cages always remindme of him. He was monkeyish. That is the bestdescription I can give of him.

He hated me from the first. And I quickly learned tobe afraid of him and his malicious pranks. Whenever hecame in sight I crept close to my mother and clung toher. But I was growing older all the time, and it wasinevitable that I should from time to time stray fromher, and stray farther and farther. And these were theopportunities that the Chatterer waited for. (I may aswell explain that we bore no names in those days; werenot known by any name. For the sake of convenience Ihave myself given names to the various Folk I was moreclosely in contact with, and the "Chatterer" is themost fitting description I can find for that preciousstepfather of mine. As for me, I have named myself"Big-Tooth." My eye-teeth were pronouncedly large.)

But to return to the Chatterer. He persistentlyterrorized me. He was always pinching me and cuffingme, and on occasion he was not above biting me. Oftenmy mother interfered, and the way she made his fur flywas a joy to see. But the result of all this was abeautiful and unending family quarrel, in which I wasthe bone of contention.

No, my home-life was not happy. I smile to myself as Iwrite the phrase. Home-life! Home! I had no home inthe modern sense of the term. My home was anassociation, not a habitation. I lived in my mother'scare, not in a house. And my mother lived anywhere, solong as when night came she was above the ground.

My mother was old-fashioned. She still clung to hertrees. It is true, the more progressive members of ourhorde lived in the caves above the river. But mymother was suspicious and unprogressive. The trees weregood enough for her. Of course, we had one particulartree in which we usually roosted, though we oftenroosted in other trees when nightfall caught us. In aconvenient fork was a sort of rude platform of twigsand branches and creeping things. It was more like ahuge bird-nest than anything else, though it was athousand times cruder in the weaving than anybird-nest. But it had one feature that I have neverseen attached to any bird-nest, namely, a roof.

Oh, not a roof such as modern man makes! Nor a roofsuch as is made by the lowest aborigines of to-day. Itwas infinitely more clumsy than the clumsiest handiworkof man--of man as we know him. It was put together in acasual, helter-skelter sort of way. Above the fork ofthe tree whereon we rested was a pile of dead branchesand brush. Four or five adjacent forks held what I mayterm the various ridge-poles. These were merely stoutsticks an inch or so in diameter. On them rested thebrush and branches. These seemed to have been tossed onalmost aimlessly. There was no attempt at thatching.And I must confess that the roof leaked miserably in aheavy rain.

But the Chatterer. He made home-life a burden for bothmy mother and me--and by home-life I mean, not theleaky nest in the tree, but the group-life of the threeof us. He was most malicious in his persecution of me.That was the one purpose to which he held steadfastlyfor longer than five minutes. Also, as time went by,my mother was less eager in her defence of me. Ithink, what of the continuous rows raised by theChatterer, that I must have become a nuisance to her.At any rate, the situation went from bad to worse sorapidly that I should soon, of my own volition, haveleft home. But the satisfaction of performing soindependent an act was denied me. Before I was readyto go, I was thrown out. And I mean this literally.

The opportunity came to the Chatterer one day when Iwas alone in the nest. My mother and the Chatterer hadgone away together toward the blueberry swamp. He musthave planned the whole thing, for I heard him returningalone through the forest, roaring with self-inducedrage as he came. Like all the men of our horde, whenthey were angry or were trying to make themselvesangry, he stopped now and again to hammer on his chestwith his fist.

I realized the helplessness of my situation, andcrouched trembling in the nest. The Chatterer camedirectly to the tree--I remember it was an oaktree--and began to climb up. And he never ceased for amoment from his infernal row. As I have said, ourlanguage was extremely meagre, and he must havestrained it by the variety of ways in which he informedme of his undying hatred of me and of his intentionthere and then to have it out with me.

As he climbed to the fork, I fled out the greathorizontal limb. He followed me, and out I went,farther and farther. At last I was out amongst thesmall twigs and leaves. The Chatterer was ever acoward, and greater always than any anger he everworked up was his caution. He was afraid to follow meout amongst the leaves and twigs. For that matter, hisgreater weight would have crashed him through thefoliage before he could have got to me.

But it was not necessary for him to reach me, and wellhe knew it, the scoundrel! With a malevolent expressionon his face, his beady eyes gleaming with cruelintelligence, he began teetering. Teetering!--and withme out on the very edge of the bough, clutching at thetwigs that broke continually with my weight. Twentyfeet beneath me was the earth.

Wildly and more--wildly he teetered, grinning at me hisgloating hatred. Then came the end. All four holdsbroke at the same time, and I fell, back-downward,looking up at him, my hands and feet still clutchingthe broken twigs. Luckily, there were no wild pigsunder me, and my fall was broken by the tough andspringy bushes.

Usually, my falls destroy my dreams, the nervous shockbeing sufficient to bridge the thousand centuries in aninstant and hurl me wide awake into my little bed,where, perchance, I lie sweating and trembling and hearthe cuckoo clock calling the hour in the hall. Butthis dream of my leaving home I have had many times,and never yet have I been awakened by it. Always do Icrash, shrieking, down through the brush and fetch upwith a bump on the ground.

Scratched and bruised and whimpering, I lay where I hadfallen. Peering up through the bushes, I could see theChatterer. He had set up a demoniacal chant of joy andwas keeping time to it with his teetering. I quicklyhushed my whimpering. I was no longer in the safety ofthe trees, and I knew the danger I ran of bringing uponmyself the hunting animals by too audible an expressionof my grief.

I remember, as my sobs died down, that I becameinterested in watching the strange light-effectsproduced by partially opening and closing my tear-weteyelids. Then I began to investigate, and found that Iwas not so very badly damaged by my fall. I had lostsome hair and hide, here and there; the sharp andjagged end of a broken branch had thrust fully an inchinto my forearm; and my right hip, which had borne thebrunt of my contact with the ground, was achingintolerably. But these, after all, were only pettyhurts. No bones were broken, and in those days theflesh of man had finer healing qualities than it hasto-day. Yet it was a severe fall, for I limped with myinjured hip for fully a week afterward.

Next, as I lay in the bushes, there came upon me afeeling of desolation, a consciousness that I washomeless. I made up my mind never to return to mymother and the Chatterer. I would go far away throughthe terrible forest, and find some tree for myself inwhich to roost. As for food, I knew where to find it.For the last year at least I had not been beholden tomy mother for food. All she had furnished me wasprotection and guidance.

I crawled softly out through the bushes. Once I lookedback and saw the Chatterer still chanting andteetering. It was not a pleasant sight. I knew prettywell how to be cautious, and I was exceedingly carefulon this my first journey in the world.

I gave no thought as to where I was going. I had butone purpose, and that was to go away beyond the reachof the Chatterer. I climbed into the trees andwandered on amongst them for hours, passing from treeto tree and never touching the ground. But I did notgo in any particular direction, nor did I travelsteadily. It was my nature, as it was the nature of allmy folk, to be inconsequential. Besides, I was a merechild, and I stopped a great deal to play by the way.

The events that befell me on my leaving home are veryvague in my mind. My dreams do not cover them. Muchhas my other-self forgotten, and particularly at thisvery period. Nor have I been able to frame up thevarious dreams so as to bridge the gap between myleaving the home-tree and my arrival at the caves.

I remember that several times I came to open spaces.These I crossed in great trepidation, descending to theground and running at the top of my speed. I rememberthat there were days of rain and days of sunshine, sothat I must have wandered alone for quite a time. Iespecially dream of my misery in the rain, and of mysufferings from hunger and how I appeased it. One verystrong impression is of hunting little lizards on therocky top of an open knoll. They ran under the rocks,and most of them escaped; but occasionally I turnedover a stone and caught one. I was frightened awayfrom this knoll by snakes. They did not pursue me.They were merely basking on flat rocks in the sun. Butsuch was my inherited fear of them that I fled as fastas if they had been after me.

Then I gnawed bitter bark from young trees. I remembervaguely the eating of many green nuts, with soft shellsand milky kernels. And I remember most distinctlysuffering from a stomach-ache. It may have been causedby the green nuts, and maybe by the lizards. I do notknow. But I do know that I was fortunate in not beingdevoured during the several hours I was knotted up onthe ground with the colic.

CHAPTER V

My vision of the scene came abruptly, as I emerged fromthe forest. I found myself on the edge of a largeclear space. On one side of this space rose up highbluffs. On the other side was the river. The earthbank ran steeply down to the water, but here and there,in several places, where at some time slides of earthhad occurred, there were run-ways. These were thedrinking-places of the Folk that lived in the caves.

And this was the main abiding-place of the Folk that Ihad chanced upon. This was, I may say, by stretchingthe word, the village. My mother and the Chatterer andI, and a few other simple bodies, were what might betermed suburban residents. We were part of the horde,though we lived a distance away from it. It was only ashort distance, though it had taken me, what of mywandering, all of a week to arrive. Had I comedirectly, I could have covered the trip in an hour.

But to return. From the edge of the forest I saw thecaves in the bluff, the open space, and the run-ways tothe drinking-places. And in the open space I saw manyof the Folk. I had been straying, alone and a child,for a week. During that time I had seen not one of mykind. I had lived in terror and desolation. And now,at the sight of my kind, I was overcome with gladness,and I ran wildly toward them.

Then it was that a strange thing happened. Some one ofthe Folk saw me and uttered a warning cry. On theinstant, crying out with fear and panic, the Folk fledaway. Leaping and scrambling over the rocks, theyplunged into the mouths of the caves anddisappeared...all but one, a little baby, that had beendropped in the excitement close to the base of thebluff. He was wailing dolefully. His mother dashedout; he sprang to meet her and held on tightly as shescrambled back into the cave.

I was all alone. The populous open space had of asudden become deserted. I sat down forlornly andwhimpered. I could not understand. Why had the Folkrun away from me? In later time, when I came to knowtheir ways, I was to learn. When they saw me dashingout of the forest at top speed they concluded that Iwas being pursued by some hunting animal. By myunceremonious approach I had stampeded them.

As I sat and watched the cave-mouths I became awarethat the Folk were watching me. Soon they werethrusting their heads out. A little later they werecalling back and forth to one another. In the hurryand confusion it had happened that all had not gainedtheir own caves. Some of the young ones had soughtrefuge in other caves. The mothers did not call forthem by name, because that was an invention we had notyet made. All were nameless. The mothers utteredquerulous, anxious cries, which were recognized by theyoung ones. Thus, had my mother been there calling tome, I should have recognized her voice amongst thevoices of a thousand mothers, and in the same way wouldshe have recognized mine amongst a thousand.

This calling back and forth continued for some time,but they were too cautious to come out of their cavesand descend to the ground. Finally one did come. Hewas destined to play a large part in my life, and forthat matter he already played a large part in the livesof all the members of the horde. He it was whom Ishall call Red-Eye in the pages of this history--socalled because of his inflamed eyes, the lids beingalways red, and, by the peculiar effect they produced,seeming to advertise the terrible savagery of him. Thecolor of his soul was red.

He was a monster in all ways. Physically he was agiant. He must have weighed one hundred and seventypounds. He was the largest one of our kind I ever saw.Nor did I ever see one of the Fire People so large ashe, nor one of the Tree People. Sometimes, when in thenewspapers I happen upon descriptions of our modernbruisers and prizefighters, I wonder what chance thebest of them would have had against him.

I am afraid not much of a chance. With one grip of hisiron fingers and a pull, he could have plucked amuscle, say a biceps, by the roots, clear out of theirbodies. A back-handed, loose blow of his fist couldhave smashed their skulls like egg-shells. With a sweepof his wicked feet (or hind-hands) he could havedisembowelled them. A twist could have broken theirnecks, and I know that with a single crunch of his jawshe could have pierced, at the same moment, the greatvein of the throat in front and the spinal marrow atthe back.

He could spring twenty feet horizontally from a sittingposition. He was abominably hairy. It was a matter ofpride with us to be not very hairy. But he was coveredwith hair all over, on the inside of the arms as wellas the outside, and even the ears themselves. The onlyplaces on him where the hair did not grow were thesoles of his hands and feet and beneath his eyes. Hewas frightfully ugly, his ferocious grinning mouth andhuge down-hanging under-lip being but in harmony withhis terrible eyes.

This was Red-Eye. And right gingerly he crept out orhis cave and descended to the ground. Ignoring me, heproceeded to reconnoitre. He bent forward from thehips as he walked; and so far forward did he bend, andso long were his arms, that with every step he touchedthe knuckles of his hands to the ground on either sideof him. He was awkward in the semi-erect position ofwalking that he assumed, and he really touched hisknuckles to the ground in order to balance himself.But oh, I tell you he could run on all-fours! Now thiswas something at which we were particularly awkward.Furthermore, it was a rare individual among us whobalanced himself with his knuckles when walking. Suchan individual was an atavism, and Red-Eye was an evengreater atavism.

That is what he was--an atavism. We were in theprocess of changing our tree-life to life on theground. For many generations we had been going throughthis change, and our bodies and carriage had likewisechanged. But Red-Eye had reverted to the moreprimitive tree-dwelling type. Perforce, because he wasborn in our horde he stayed with us; but in actualityhe was an atavism and his place was elsewhere.

Very circumspect and very alert, he moved here andthere about the open space, peering through the vistasamong the trees and trying to catch a glimpse of thehunting animal that all suspected had pursued me. Andwhile he did this, taking no notice of me, the Folkcrowded at the cave-mouths and watched.

At last he evidently decided that there was no dangerlurking about. He was returning from the head of therun-way, from where he had taken a peep down at thedrinking-place. His course brought him near, but stillhe did not notice me. He proceeded casually on his wayuntil abreast of me, and then, without warning and withincredible swiftness, he smote me a buffet on the head.I was knocked backward fully a dozen feet before Ifetched up against the ground, and I remember,half-stunned, even as the blow was struck, hearing thewild uproar of clucking and shrieking laughter thatarose from the caves. It was a great joke--at least inthat day; and right heartily the Folk appreciated it.

Thus was I received into the horde. Red-Eye paid nofurther attention to me, and I was at liberty towhimper and sob to my heart's content. Several of thewomen gathered curiously about me, and I recognizedthem. I had encountered them the preceding year whenmy mother had taken me to the hazelnut canyons.

But they quickly left me alone, being replaced by adozen curious and teasing youngsters. They formed acircle around me, pointing their fingers, making faces,and poking and pinching me. I was frightened, and fora time I endured them, then anger got the best of meand I sprang tooth and nail upon the most audacious oneof them--none other than Lop-Ear himself. I have sonamed him because he could prick up only one of hisears. The other ear always hung limp and withoutmovement. Some accident had injured the muscles anddeprived him of the use of it.

He closed with me, and we went at it for all the worldlike a couple of small boys fighting. We scratched andbit, pulled hair, clinched, and threw each other down.I remember I succeeded in getting on him what in mycollege days I learned was called a half-Nelson. Thishold gave me the decided advantage. But I did notenjoy it long. He twisted up one leg, and with thefoot (or hind-hand) made so savage an onslaught upon myabdomen as to threaten to disembowel me. I had torelease him in order to save myself, and then we wentat it again.

Lop-Ear was a year older than I, but I was severaltimes angrier than he, and in the end he took to hisheels. I chased him across the open and down a run-wayto the river. But he was better acquainted with thelocality and ran along the edge of the water and upanother run-way. He cut diagonally across the openspace and dashed into a wide-mouthed cave.

Before I knew it, I had plunged after him into thedarkness. The next moment I was badly frightened. Ihad never been in a cave before. I began to whimperand cry out. Lop-Ear chattered mockingly at me, and,springing upon me unseen, tumbled me over. He did notrisk a second encounter, however, and took himself off.I was between him and the entrance, and he did not passme; yet he seemed to have gone away. I listened, butcould get no clew as to where he was. This puzzled me,and when I regained the outside I sat down to watch.

He never came out of the entrance, of that I wascertain; yet at the end of several minutes he chuckledat my elbow. Again I ran after him, and again he raninto the cave; but this time I stopped at the mouth. Idropped back a short distance and watched. He did notcome out, yet, as before, he chuckled at my elbow andwas chased by me a third time into the cave.

This performance was repeated several times. Then Ifollowed him into the cave, where I searched vainly forhim. I was curious. I could not understand how heeluded me. Always he went into the cave, never did hecome out of it, yet always did he arrive there at myelbow and mock me. Thus did our fight transform itselfinto a game of hide and seek.

All afternoon, with occasional intervals, we kept itup, and a playful, friendly spirit arose between us.In the end, he did not run away from me, and we sattogether with our arms around each other. A littlelater he disclosed the mystery of the wide-mouthedcave. Holding me by the hand he led me inside. Itconnected by a narrow crevice with another cave, and itwas through this that we regained the open air.

We were now good friends. When the other young onesgathered around to tease, he joined with me inattacking them; and so viciously did we behave thatbefore long I was let alone. Lop-Ear made meacquainted with the village. There was little that hecould tell me of conditions and customs--he had not thenecessary vocabulary; but by observing his actions Ilearned much, and also he showed me places and things.

He took me up the open space, between the caves and theriver, and into the forest beyond, where, in a grassyplace among the trees, we made a meal of stringy-rootedcarrots. After that we had a good drink at the riverand started up the run-way to the caves.

It was in the run-way that we came upon Red-Eye again.The first I knew, Lop-Ear had shrunk away to one sideand was crouching low against the bank. Naturally andinvoluntarily, I imitated him. Then it was that Ilooked to see the cause of his fear. It was Red-Eye,swaggering down the centre of the run-way and scowlingfiercely with his inflamed eyes. I noticed that allthe youngsters shrank away from him as we had done,while the grown-ups regarded him with wary eyes whenhe drew near, and stepped aside to give him the centreof the path.

As twilight came on, the open space was deserted. TheFolk were seeking the safety of the caves. Lop-Ear ledthe way to bed. High up the bluff we climbed, higherthan all the other caves, to a tiny crevice that couldnot be seen from the ground. Into this Lop-Earsqueezed. I followed with difficulty, so narrow wasthe entrance, and found myself in a small rock-chamber.It was very low--not more than a couple of feet inheight, and possibly three feet by four in width andlength. Here, cuddled together in each other's arms,we slept out the night.

CHAPTER VI

While the more courageous of the youngsters played inand out of the large-mouthed caves, I early learnedthat such caves were unoccupied. No one slept in themat night. Only the crevice-mouthed caves were used,the narrower the mouth the better. This was from fearof the preying animals that made life a burden to us inthose days and nights.

The first morning, after my night's sleep with Lop-Ear,I learned the advantage of the narrow-mouthed caves.It was just daylight when old Saber-Tooth, the tiger,walked into the open space. Two of the Folk werealready up. They made a rush for it. Whether theywere panic-stricken, or whether he was too close ontheir heels for them to attempt to scramble up thebluff to the crevices, I do not know; but at any ratethey dashed into the wide-mouthed cave wherein Lop-Earand I had played the afternoon before.

What happened inside there was no way of telling, butit is fair to conclude that the two Folk slippedthrough the connecting crevice into the other cave.This crevice was too small to allow for the passage ofSaber-Tooth, and he came out the way he had gone in,unsatisfied and angry. It was evident that his night'shunting had been unsuccessful and that he had expectedto make a meal off of us. He caught sight of the twoFolk at the other cave-mouth and sprang for them. Ofcourse, they darted through the passageway into thefirst cave. He emerged angrier than ever and snarling.

Pandemonium broke loose amongst the rest of us. All upand down the great bluff, we crowded the crevices andoutside ledges, and we were all chattering andshrieking in a thousand keys. And we were all makingfaces--snarling faces; this was an instinct with us.We were as angry as Saber-Tooth, though our anger wasallied with fear. I remember that I shrieked and madefaces with the best of them. Not only did they set theexample, but I felt the urge from within me to do thesame things they were doing. My hair was bristling,and I was convulsed with a fierce, unreasoning rage.

For some time old Saber-Tooth continued dashing in andout of first the one cave and then the other. But thetwo Folk merely slipped back and forth through theconnecting crevice and eluded him. In the meantime therest of us up the bluff had proceeded to action. Everytime he appeared outside we pelted him with rocks. Atfirst we merely dropped them on him, but we soon beganto whiz them down with the added force of our muscles.

This bombardment drew Saber-Tooth's attention to us andmade him angrier than ever. He abandoned his pursuitof the two Folk and sprang up the bluff toward the restof us, clawing at the crumbling rock and snarling as heclawed his upward way. At this awful sight, the lastone of us sought refuge inside our caves. I know this,because I peeped out and saw the whole bluff-sidedeserted, save for Saber-Tooth, who had lost hisfooting and was sliding and falling down.

I called out the cry of encouragement, and again thebluff was covered by the screaming horde and the stoneswere falling faster than ever. Saber-Tooth was franticwith rage. Time and again he assaulted the bluff.Once he even gained the first crevice-entrances beforehe fell back, but was unable to force his way inside.With each upward rush he made, waves of fear surgedover us. At first, at such times, most of us dashedinside; but some remained outside to hammer him withstones, and soon all of us remained outside and kept upthe fusillade.

Never was so masterly a creature so completely baffled.It hurt his pride terribly, thus to be outwitted by thesmall and tender Folk. He stood on the ground andlooked up at us, snarling, lashing his tail, snappingat the stones that fell near to him. Once I whizzeddown a stone, and just at the right moment he lookedup. It caught him full on the end of his nose, and hewent straight up in the air, all four feet of him,roaring and caterwauling, what of the hurt andsurprise.

He was beaten and he knew it. Recovering his dignity,he stalked out solemnly from under the rain of stones.He stopped in the middle of the open space and lookedwistfully and hungrily back at us. He hated to foregothe meal, and we were just so much meat, cornered butinaccessible. This sight of him started us tolaughing. We laughed derisively and uproariously, allof us. Now animals do not like mockery. To be laughedat makes them angry. And in such fashion our laughteraffected Saber-Tooth. He turned with a roar andcharged the bluff again. This was what we wanted. Thefight had become a game, and we took huge delight inpelting him.

But this attack did not last long. He quicklyrecovered his common sense, and besides, our missileswere shrewd to hurt. Vividly do I recollect the visionof one bulging eye of his, swollen almost shut by oneof the stones we had thrown. And vividly do I retainthe picture of him as he stood on the edge of theforest whither he had finally retreated. He waslooking back at us, his writhing lips lifted clear ofthe very roots of his huge fangs, his hair bristlingand his tail lashing. He gave one last snarl and slidfrom view among the trees.

And then such a chattering as went up. We swarmed outof our holes, examining the marks his claws had made onthe crumbling rock of the bluff, all of us talking atonce. One of the two Folk who had been caught in thedouble cave was part-grown, half child and half youth.They had come out proudly from their refuge, and wesurrounded them in an admiring crowd. Then the youngfellow's mother broke through and fell upon him in atremendous rage, boxing his ears, pulling his hair, andshrieking like a demon. She was a strapping big woman,very hairy, and the thrashing she gave him was adelight to the horde. We roared with laughter, holdingon to one another or rolling on the ground in our glee.

In spite of the reign of fear under which we lived, theFolk were always great laughers. We had the sense ofhumor. Our merriment was Gargantuan. It was neverrestrained. There was nothing half way about it. Whena thing was funny we were convulsed with appreciationof it, and the simplest, crudest things were funny tous. Oh, we were great laughers, I can tell you.

The way we had treated Saber-Tooth was the way wetreated all animals that invaded the village. We keptour run-ways and drinking-places to ourselves by makinglife miserable for the animals that trespassed orstrayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercesthunting animals we so bedevilled that they learned toleave our places alone. We were not fighters likethem; we were cunning and cowardly, and it was becauseof our cunning and cowardice, and our inordinatecapacity for fear, that we survived in that frightfullyhostile environment of the Younger World.

Lop-Ear, I figure, was a year older than I. What hispast history was he had no way of telling me, but as Inever saw anything of his mother I believed him to bean orphan. After all, fathers did not count in ourhorde. Marriage was as yet in a rude state, andcouples had a way of quarrelling and separating.Modern man, what of his divorce institution, does thesame thing legally. But we had no laws. Custom wasall we went by, and our custom in this particularmatter was rather promiscuous .

Nevertheless, as this narrative will show later on, webetrayed glimmering adumbrations of the monogamy thatwas later to give power to, and make mighty, suchtribes as embraced it. Furthermore, even at the time Iwas born, there were several faithful couples thatlived in the trees in the neighborhood of my mother.Living in the thick of the horde did not conduce tomonogamy. It was for this reason, undoubtedly, thatthe faithful couples went away and lived by themselves.Through many years these couples stayed together,though when the man or woman died or was eaten thesurvivor invariably found a new mate.

There was one thing that greatly puzzled me during thefirst days of my residence in the horde. There was anameless and incommunicable fear that rested upon all.At first it appeared to be connected wholly withdirection. The horde feared the northeast. It livedin perpetual apprehension of that quarter of thecompass. And every individual gazed more frequentlyand with greater alarm in that direction than in anyother.

When Lop-Ear and I went toward the north-east to eatthe stringy-rooted carrots that at that season were attheir best, he became unusually timid. He was contentto eat the leavings, the big tough carrots and thelittle ropy ones, rather than to venture a shortdistance farther on to where the carrots were as yetuntouched. When I so ventured, he scolded me andquarrelled with me. He gave me to understand that inthat direction was some horrible danger, but just whatthe horrible danger was his paucity of language wouldnot permit him to say.

Many a good meal I got in this fashion, while hescolded and chattered vainly at me. I could notunderstand. I kept very alert, but I could see nodanger. I calculated always the distance betweenmyself and the nearest tree, and knew that to thathaven of refuge I could out-foot the Tawny One, or oldSaber-Tooth, did one or the other suddenly appear.

One late afternoon, in the village, a great uproararose. The horde was animated with a single emotion,that of fear. The bluff-side swarmed with the Folk,all gazing and pointing into the northeast. I did notknow what it was, but I scrambled all the way up to thesafety of my own high little cave before ever I turnedaround to see.

And then, across the river, away into the northeast, Isaw for the first time the mystery of smoke. It wasthe biggest animal I had ever seen. I thought it was amonster snake, up-ended, rearing its head high abovethe trees and swaying back and forth. And yet,somehow, I seemed to gather from the conduct of theFolk that the smoke itself was not the danger. Theyappeared to fear it as the token of something else.What this something else was I was unable to guess.Nor could they tell me. Yet I was soon to know, and Iwas to know it as a thing more terrible than the TawnyOne, than old Saber-Tooth, than the snakes themselves,than which it seemed there could be no things moreterrible.

CHAPTER VII

Broken-Tooth was another youngster who lived byhimself. His mother lived in the caves, but two morechildren had come after him and he had been thrust outto shift for himself. We had witnessed the performanceduring the several preceding days, and it had given usno little glee. Broken-Tooth did not want to go, andevery time his mother left the cave he sneaked backinto it. When she returned and found him there herrages were delightful. Half the horde made a practiceof watching for these moments. First, from within thecave, would come her scolding and shrieking. Then wecould hear sounds of the thrashing and the yelling ofBroken-Tooth. About this time the two younger childrenjoined in. And finally, like the eruption of aminiature volcano, Broken-Tooth would come flying out.

At the end of several days his leaving home wasaccomplished. He wailed his grief, unheeded, from thecentre of the open space, for at least half an hour,and then came to live with Lop-Ear and me. Our cave wassmall, but with squeezing there was room for three. Ihave no recollection of Broken-Tooth spending more thanone night with us, so the accident must have happenedright away.

It came in the middle of the day. In the morning wehad eaten our fill of the carrots, and then, madeheedless by play, we had ventured on to the big treesjust beyond. I cannot understand how Lop-Ear got overhis habitual caution, but it must have been the play.We were having a great time playing tree tag. And suchtag! We leaped ten or fifteen-foot gaps as a matter ofcourse. And a twenty or twenty-five foot deliberatedrop clear down to the ground was nothing to us. Infact, I am almost afraid to say the great distances wedropped. As we grew older and heavier we found we hadto be more cautious in dropping, but at that age ourbodies were all strings and springs and we could doanything.

Broken-Tooth displayed remarkable agility in the game.He was "It" less frequently than any of us, and in thecourse of the game he discovered one difficult "slip"that neither Lop-Ear nor I was able to accomplish. Tobe truthful, we were afraid to attempt it.

When we were "It," Broken-Tooth always ran out to theend of a lofty branch in a certain tree. From the endof the branch to the ground it must have been seventyfeet, and nothing intervened to break a fall. Butabout twenty feet lower down, and fully fifteen feetout from the perpendicular, was the thick branch ofanother tree.

As we ran out the limb, Broken-Tooth, facing us, wouldbegin teetering. This naturally impeded our progress;but there was more in the teetering than that. Heteetered with his back to the jump he was to make.Just as we nearly reached him he would let go. Theteetering branch was like a spring-board. It threw himfar out, backward, as he fell. And as he fell heturned around sidewise in the air so as to face theother branch into which he was falling. This branchbent far down under the impact, and sometimes there wasan ominous crackling; but it never broke, and out ofthe leaves was always to be seen the face ofBroken-Tooth grinning triumphantly up at us.

I was "It" the last time Broken-Tooth tried this. Hehad gained the end of the branch and begun histeetering, and I was creeping out after him, whensuddenly there came a low warning cry from Lop-Ear. Ilooked down and saw him in the main fork of the treecrouching close against the trunk. Instinctively Icrouched down upon the thick limb. Broken-Toothstopped teetering, but the branch would not stop, andhis body continued bobbing up and down with therustling leaves.

I heard the crackle of a dry twig, and looking down sawmy first Fire-Man. He was creeping stealthily along onthe ground and peering up into the tree. At first Ithought he was a wild animal, because he wore aroundhis waist and over his shoulders a ragged piece ofbearskin. And then I saw his hands and feet, and moreclearly his features. He was very much like my kind,except that he was less hairy and that his feet wereless like hands than ours. In fact, he and his people,as I was later to know, were far less hairy than we,though we, in turn, were equally less hairy than theTree People.

It came to me instantly, as I looked at him. This wasthe terror of the northeast, of which the mystery ofsmoke was a token. Yet I was puzzled. Certainly hewas nothing; of which to be afraid. Red-Eye or any ofour strong men would have been more than a match forhim. He was old, too, wizened with age, and the hairon his face was gray. Also, he limped badly with oneleg. There was no doubt at all that we could out-runhim and out-climb him. He could never catch us, thatwas certain.

But he carried something in his hand that I had neverseen before. It was a bow and arrow. But at that timea bow and arrow had no meaning for me. How was I toknow that death lurked in that bent piece of wood? ButLop-Ear knew. He had evidently seen the Fire Peoplebefore and knew something of their ways. The Fire-Manpeered up at him and circled around the tree. Andaround the main trunk above the fork Lop-Ear circledtoo, keeping always the trunk between himself and theFire-Man.

The latter abruptly reversed his circling. Lop-Ear,caught unawares, also hastily reversed, but did not winthe protection of the trunk until after the Fire-Manhad twanged the bow.

I saw the arrow leap up, miss Lop-Ear, glance against alimb, and fall back to the ground. I danced up anddown on my lofty perch with delight. It was a game!The Fire-Man was throwing things at Lop-Ear as wesometimes threw things at one another.

The game continued a little longer, but Lop-Ear did notexpose himself a second time. Then the Fire-Man gaveit up. I leaned far out over my horizontal limb andchattered down at him. I wanted to play. I wanted tohave him try to hit me with the thing. He saw me, butignored me, turning his attention to Broken-Tooth, whowas still teetering slightly and involuntarily on theend of the branch.

The first arrow leaped upward. Broken-Tooth yelledwith fright and pain. It had reached its mark. Thisput a new complexion on the matter. I no longer caredto play, but crouched trembling close to my limb. Asecond arrow and a third soared up, missingBroken-Tooth, rustling the leaves as they passedthrough, arching in their flight and returning toearth.

The Fire-Man stretched his bow again. He shifted hisposition, walking away several steps, then shifted it asecond time. The bow-string twanged, the arrow leapedupward, and Broken-Tooth, uttering a terrible scream,fell off the branch. I saw him as he went down,turning over and over, all arms and legs it seemed, theshaft of the arrow projecting from his chest andappearing and disappearing with each revolution of hisbody.

Sheer down, screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashingto the earth with an audible thud and crunch, his bodyrebounding slightly and settling down again. Still helived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with hishands and feet. I remember the Fire-Man runningforward with a stone and hammering him on thehead...and then I remember no more.

Always, during my childhood, at this stage of thedream, did I wake up screaming with fright--to find,often, my mother or nurse, anxious and startled, by mybedside, passing soothing hands through my hair andtelling me that they were there and that there wasnothing to fear.

My next dream, in the order of succession, beginsalways with the flight of Lop-Ear and myself throughthe forest. The Fire-Man and Broken-Tooth and the treeof the tragedy are gone. Lop-Ear and I, in a cautiouspanic, are fleeing through the trees. In my right legis a burning pain; and from the flesh, protruding headand shaft from either side, is an arrow of theFire-Man. Not only did the pull and strain of it painme severely, but it bothered my movements and made itimpossible for me to keep up with Lop-Ear.

At last I gave up, crouching in the secure fork of atree. Lop-Ear went right on. I called to him--mostplaintively, I remember; and he stopped and lookedback. Then he returned to me, climbing into the forkand examining the arrow. He tried to pull it out, butone way the flesh resisted the barbed lead, and theother way it resisted the feathered shaft. Also, ithurt grievously, and I stopped him.

For some time we crouched there, Lop-Ear nervous andanxious to be gone, perpetually and apprehensivelypeering this way and that, and myself whimpering softlyand sobbing. Lop-Ear was plainly in a funk, and yethis conduct in remaining by me, in spite of his fear, Itake as a foreshadowing of the altruism and comradeshipthat have helped make man the mightiest of the animals.

Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through theflesh, and I angrily stopped him. Then he bent downand began gnawing the shaft of the arrow with histeeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in bothhands so that it would not play about in the wound, andat the same time I held on to him. I often meditateupon this scene--the two of us, half-grown cubs, in thechildhood of the race, and the one mastering his fear,beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order tostand by and succor the other. And there rises upbefore me all that was there foreshadowed, and I seevisions of Damon and Pythias, of life-saving crews andRed Cross nurses, of martyrs and leaders of forlornhopes, of Father Damien, and of the Christ himself, andof all the men of earth, mighty of stature, whosestrength may trace back to the elemental loins ofLop-Ear and Big-Tooth and other dim denizens of theYounger World.

When Lop-Ear had chewed off the head of the arrow, theshaft was withdrawn easily enough. I started to go on,but this time it was he that stopped me. My leg wasbleeding profusely. Some of the smaller veins haddoubtless been ruptured. Running out to the end of abranch, Lop-Ear gathered a handful of green leaves.These he stuffed into the wound. They accomplished thepurpose, for the bleeding soon stopped. Then we wenton together, back to the safety of the caves.

CHAPTER VIII

Well do I remember that first winter after I left home.I have long dreams of sitting shivering in the cold.Lop-Ear and I sit close together, with our arms andlegs about each other, blue-faced and with chatteringteeth. It got particularly crisp along toward morning.In those chill early hours we slept little, huddlingtogether in numb misery and waiting for the sunrise inorder to get warm.

When we went outside there was a crackle of frost underfoot. One morning we discovered ice on the surface ofthe quiet water in the eddy where was thedrinking-place, and there was a great How-do-you-doabout it. Old Marrow-Bone was the oldest member of thehorde, and he had never seen anything like it before.I remember the worried, plaintive look that came intohis eyes as he examined the ice. (This plaintive lookalways came into our eyes when we did not understand athing, or when we felt the prod of some vague andinexpressible desire.) Red-Eye, too, when heinvestigated the ice, looked bleak and plaintive, andstared across the river into the northeast, as thoughin some way he connected the Fire People with thislatest happening.

But we found ice only on that one morning, and that wasthe coldest winter we experienced. I have no memory ofother winters when it was so cold. I have oftenthought that that cold winter was a fore-runner of thecountless cold winters to come, as the ice-sheet fromfarther north crept down over the face of the land. Butwe never saw that ice-sheet. Many generations musthave passed away before the descendants of the hordemigrated south, or remained and adapted themselves tothe changed conditions.

Life was hit or miss and happy-go-lucky with us.Little was ever planned, and less was executed. We atewhen we were hungry, drank when we were thirsty,avoided our carnivorous enemies, took shelter in thecaves at night, and for the rest just sort of playedalong through life.

We were very curious, easily amused, and full of tricksand pranks. There was no seriousness about us, exceptwhen we were in danger or were angry, in which casesthe one was quickly forgotten and the other as quicklygot over.

We were inconsecutive, illogical, and inconsequential.We had no steadfastness of purpose, and it was herethat the Fire People were ahead of us. They possessedall these things of which we possessed so little.Occasionally, however, especially in the realm of theemotions, we were capable of long-cherished purpose.The faithfulness of the monogamic couples I havereferred to may be explained as a matter of habit; butmy long desire for the Swift One cannot be soexplained, any more than can be explained the undyingenmity between me and Red-Eye.

But it was our inconsequentiality and stupidity thatespecially distresses me when I look back upon thatlife in the long ago. Once I found a broken gourd whichhappened to lie right side up and which had been filledwith the rain. The water was sweet, and I drank it. Ieven took the gourd down to the stream and filled itwith more water, some of which I drank and some ofwhich I poured over Lop-Ear. And then I threw thegourd away. It never entered my head to fill the gourdwith water and carry it into my cave. Yet often I wasthirsty at night, especially after eating wild onionsand watercress, and no one ever dared leave the cavesat night for a drink.

Another time I found a dry; gourd, inside of which theseeds rattled. I had fun with it for a while. But itwas a play thing, nothing more. And yet, it was notlong after this that the using of gourds for storingwater became the general practice of the horde. But Iwas not the inventor. The honor was due to oldMarrow-Bone, and it is fair to assume that it was thenecessity of his great age that brought about theinnovation.

At any rate, the first member of the horde to usegourds was Marrow-Bone. He kept a supply ofdrinking-water in his cave, which cave belonged to hisson, the Hairless One, who permitted him to occupy acorner of it. We used to see Marrow-Bone filling hisgourd at the drinking-place and carrying it carefullyup to his cave. Imitation was strong in the Folk, andfirst one, and then another and another, procured agourd and used it in similar fashion, until it was ageneral practice with all of us so to store water.

Sometimes old Marrow-Bone had sick spells and wasunable to leave the cave. Then it was that theHairless One filled the gourd for him. A little later,the Hairless One deputed the task to Long-Lip, hisson. And after that, even when Marrow-Bone was wellagain, Long-Lip continued carrying water for him. Byand by, except on unusual occasions, the men nevercarried any water at all, leaving the task to the womenand larger children. Lop-Ear and I were independent.We carried water only for ourselves, and we oftenmocked the young water-carriers when they were calledaway from play to fill the gourds.

Progress was slow with us. We played through life,even the adults, much in the same way that childrenplay, and we played as none of the other animalsplayed. What little we learned, was usually in thecourse of play, and was due to our curiosity andkeenness of appreciation. For that matter, the one biginvention of the horde, during the time I lived withit, was the use of gourds. At first we stored onlywater in the gourds--in imitation of old Marrow-Bone.

But one day some one of the women--I do not know whichone--filled a gourd with black-berries and carried itto her cave. In no time all the women were carryingberries and nuts and roots in the gourds. The idea,once started, had to go on. Another evolution of thecarrying-receptacle was due to the women. Withoutdoubt, some woman's gourd was too small, or else shehad forgotten her gourd; but be that as it may, shebent two great leaves together, pinning the seams withtwigs, and carried home a bigger quantity of berriesthan could have been contained in the largest gourd.

So far we got, and no farther, in the transportation ofsupplies during the years I lived with the Folk. Itnever entered anybody's head to weave a basket out ofwillow-withes. Sometimes the men and women tied toughvines about the bundles of ferns and branches that theycarried to the caves to sleep upon. Possibly in ten ortwenty generations we might have worked up to theweaving of baskets. And of this, one thing is sure: ifonce we wove withes into baskets, the next andinevitable step would have been the weaving of cloth.Clothes would have followed, and with covering ournakedness would have come modesty.

Thus was momentum gained in the Younger World. But wewere without this momentum. We were just gettingstarted, and we could not go far in a singlegeneration. We were without weapons, without fire, andin the raw beginnings of speech. The device of writinglay so far in the future that I am appalled when Ithink of it.

Even I was once on the verge of a great discovery. Toshow you how fortuitous was development in those dayslet me state that had it not been for the gluttony ofLop-Ear I might have brought about the domestication ofthe dog. And this was something that the Fire Peoplewho lived to the northeast had not yet achieved. Theywere without dogs; this I knew from observation. Butlet me tell you how Lop-Ear's gluttony possibly setback our social development many generations.

Well to the west of our caves was a great swamp, but tothe south lay a stretch of low, rocky hills. Thesewere little frequented for two reasons. First of all,there was no food there of the kind we ate; and next,those rocky hills were filled with the lairs ofcarnivorous beasts.

But Lop-Ear and I strayed over to the hills one day.We would not have strayed had we not been teasing atiger. Please do not laugh. It was old Saber-Toothhimself. We were perfectly safe. We chanced upon himin the forest, early in the morning, and from thesafety of the branches overhead we chattered down athim our dislike and hatred. And from branch to branch,and from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making aninfernal row and warning all the forest-dwellers thatold Saber-Tooth was coming.

We spoiled his hunting for him, anyway. And we madehim good and angry. He snarled at us and lashed histail, and sometimes he paused and stared up at usquietly for a long time, as if debating in his mindsome way by which he could get hold of us. But we onlylaughed and pelted him with twigs and the ends ofbranches.

This tiger-baiting was common sport among the folk.Sometimes half the horde would follow from overhead atiger or lion that had ventured out in the daytime. Itwas our revenge; for more than one member of the horde,caught unexpectedly, had gone the way of the tiger'sbelly or the lion's. Also, by such ordeals ofhelplessness and shame, we taught the hunting animalsto some extent to keep out of our territory. And thenit was funny. It was a great game.

And so Lop-Ear and I had chased Saber-Tooth acrossthree miles of forest. Toward the last he put his tailbetween his legs and fled from our gibing like a beatencur. We did our best to keep up with him; but when wereached the edge of the forest he was no more than astreak in the distance.

I don't know what prompted us, unless it was curiosity;but after playing around awhile, Lop-Ear and I ventured